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My old company has done it again.
McClatchy has defied the odds and is buying 20 Knight Ridder newspapers and selling off a dozen.
It wasn't too long ago that the then-relatively small newspaper group from California flew under the radar and outbid some of its much larger competitors, picking up the Minneapolis
Star Tribune for a cool billion dollars after shedding the magazines that came with the deal for $200 million.
Of course, Wall Street and many so-called experts couldn't figure out the why and how of that deal. In fact, there was much the same reaction when McClatchy added
The (Raleigh) News & Observer to its stable a few years before.
And now Knight Ridder, at a time when so many folks are standing in line to blog the newspaper industry's obituary.
The doubters must not have been listening when McClatchy boss Gary Pruitt told the analysts that he believes in newspapers. And he and the McClatchy family and the board of directors are willing to gamble $4.5 billion (plus another $2 billion in assumed debt), minus what they will get for the 12 papers to be sold, in support of that belief. It's not a blind belief in print alone, but in the smart combination of paper and the Web -- and the delivery of news and information in any other form that emerges in the future.
It's the same kind of deep feeling about newspapers and their role in a democratic society that I was searching for, and found, in 1984 after leaving the
Chicago Sun-Times, along with 80 or so colleagues. That was after Rupert Murdoch bought our newspaper and imported his kind of journalism to the windy city.
I was lucky. I could have gone to three different newsrooms at that time. But when I met the late C.K. McClatchy and his partner in running McClatchy, Erwin Potts, there was no need to look any further. The culture most of us seek in a newspaper had been in place at
The Sacramento Bee for well over 100 years. It was still a totally family-owned company in those days. C.K. believed, as did his ancestors, that newspapers are a public service. And those family members in the next generations feel the same way. Kind of old fashioned, I know, but what a wonderful way to think about this work we do as journalists.
Public service. Nelson Poynter called it
a sacred trust. It's the kind of feeling born into the families such as the
Grahams and
Sulzbergers, the
Pulitzers and
Knights and
Ottoways, or into individuals such as Tim Hayes in
Riverside, Calif.;
Gov. James Cox in Dayton, Ohio; and the senior
Barry Bingham in Louisville. By any name, it is like a love letter for those who care deeply about quality journalism and what it can do for communities and the people who live in them.
C.K. died much too young in 1989, but Erwin carried on the tradition and groomed a young First Amendment lawyer, who had joined us in his mid-twenties and proved to be one of the best, if not
the best, legal minds I had ever worked with, to be his successor. He was a lawyer who felt his job was to figure out how to get things in the paper, not keep them out.
That lawyer, of course, is
Gary Pruitt. Now, that tradition of just about 150 years rests with him. Now more than ever. What was started by the original James McClatchy during the Gold Rush days will soon be a galaxy of 32 daily newspapers, as well as a bunch of community publications.
I retired from McClatchy five years ago, and I know that much has changed in our industry since then. And I am sure there are things I might not recognize in McClatchy, which are old-school these days. But it's still a company that hasn't had layoffs as we have seen in recent years. There have been voluntary buyouts and job freezes and the bottom-line margin is certainly more muscular than it was when I was there. And check this out: For almost all of my time as executive editor of the
Bee, there was no publisher. The president/general manager and the executive editor were true partners, each answering for their respective responsibilities.
What hasn't changed in McClatchy is the commitment to excellent journalism and to serving its communities. And you can find both on a regular basis in the small or larger newspapers.
That's the reason I received e-mails draped with smiles from people on the staffs of the Knight Ridder papers that will become McClatchy papers -- and from people who work in other newspaper companies but who just really care about the future of our business.
There are no utopias in any newsroom that I know of, or in any I ever worked in during my 47 years in the daily business, but there is a better chance to find a high level of happiness and satisfaction and a feeling that you might make a difference when the company you work for has a pedigree like McClatchy's.
This major expansion will be challenging for Gary and his team in many ways, not the least of which will be to keep faith with the culture of the past and prepare for the changing landscape of the future.
A huge challenge.
But there will be many of us watching and cheering from the sidelines.
Especially those of us who still believe in newspapers and who are romantic enough to still believe newspapers are a public service.
(Gregory Favre is in China with an ASNE delegation. The news of the sale reached them in Beijing.)
